Speakers

Peter Wolfgang

Connecticut’s Fundamental Orders is a document credited with being the first constitution creating a representative democracy, Rev. Thomas Hooker proposed that “The foundation of authority is laid in the free consent of the people” and that “As God has given us liberty let us take it.” With these words, Family Institute of Connecticut is inspired to educate all people interested in what Hooker called an “honest conversation” about what we can do to strengthen Connecticut families.

Family Institute of Connecticut supports marriage strengthening projects, research, and education concerning religious freedom, parental rights, the unborn and threats to the family. The organization supports state-level, pro-family candidates, regardless of political affiliation through the Family Institute of Connecticut Action Committee, created in 2004.

Common-sense family values are attacked and undermined in our state government. Focused on being a strong voice for the family at the Connecticut state Capitol and lobbying in defense of the family has been conducted by Family Institute of Connecticut Action, a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization.

Harold “Hal” Shurtleff is the co-founder of Camp Constitution, an all-volunteer association first formed in 2009 in Massachusetts. The camp offers classes and workshops on a number of subjects including U.S. history, the U.S. Constitution, current events, and how to be a freedom activist. Hal serves as the Camp’s director while in session. Throughout the remainder of the year, he operates a radio show, addresses groups both large and small, publishes books and other material, hosts a blog, and manages a YouTube channel and several social media outlets.

Mr. Camenker founded this ‘hardcore’ pro-family activist organization to educate people and help them confront the attacks on the traditional family, children, religion, and society. Founded in 1995, Mass Resistance is based in Massachusetts with supporters and activists in all 50 states of the US, Puerto Rico, and in over a dozen foreign countries.

Dr. Sandra Stotsky

Common Core, Student Testing, and Public Education Expert

Dr. Sandra Stotsky is a professor of education emerita at the University of Arkansas, where she held the 21st Century Chair in Teacher Quality. She served as Senior Associate Commissioner (a professional position) at the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education from 1999-2003, where she was in charge of developing or revising all the state’s K-12 standards, teacher licensure tests, and teacher and administrator licensure regulations. She served on the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education from 2006-2010 (a citizen position), on the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, from 2006-2008, and on the Common Core Validation Committee, from 2009-2010. She was one of the five members of the Validation Committee who would not sign off on the standards.

David Kopacz

2nd Amendment and Homeschooling Advocate

David is the Chairman of the Massachusetts Constitution Party, Chairman of the Flag Day 2nd Amendment Rally Committee and host of Red Pill Politics. As a former Board of Education Committee Member, he removed his children from public schools due to the harmful socially Progressive agenda and biased political indoctrination he witnessed at an elementary school level. His gun violence research exposes a direct correlation between adolescent psychotropic drug prescription use, broken homes, progressive policies and the recent phenomenon of school shootings.

Christina Marie Bennett

Pro-life and First Amendment Activist – Family Institute of Connecticut

Christina Bennett writes for a number of pro-life news and analysis blogs including Live Action News, Bound4Life, and her own blog where her faith shines through the events of the day. She is an advocate for women and their children whose lives were otherwise at risk for abortion without intervention.

Anne Manusky

Public Education and Student Data Privacy Advocate

Child Abuse in the Classroom CT Organizer

Anne Manusky is an Easton, CT parent, a former school counselor, a former research assistant in mental health, and an advocate for children’s education. Her research, testimony, and activism focuses on the encroachment of parental choices, testing validity, data and privacy concerns, local control of education, and curriculum review. She works to expose the true nature of today’s education bureaucracy, sexual and political indoctrination, age-inappropriate standards, and the absolute failure of Common Core and its Smarter Balance Test.

Working to end the federally enforced Every Student Succeeds Act, Lynne Taylor focuses on mandates that require the application of “abusive psychological techniques on children.” Also known as “ESSA,” the law codified President Obama’s entire education agenda into one unconstitutional bill to reinforce Common Core standards. Lynne will discuss how ESSA deploys “social and emotional learning” schemes and funds a broad array of radical and dangerous programs and why this inappropriate deployment of these techniques must be legally confronted and stopped.

Pastor Earl C. Wallace

Pastor Earl is divinely inspired to help other men seek the rights and freedoms expressed through the Ten Commandments, which America’s Founding Fathers called “inalienable in The Declaration of Independence. Earl has taught “The Biblical Basis of the Bill of Rights” in firehouses, libraries, Bible studies, to radio and YouTube audiences, and at his Liberty Christian Fellowship Church. He teaches each summer at Camp Constitution and wrote The Three-Dimensional Leader: Negotiating Your Mission, Resources, and Context. Pastor Earl is a husband, a father of 3, and grandfather of 8! He also is a musician, who leads worship and writes music that explains the application of timeless Bible truths to our contemporary lives.

Attorney Gregory A. Hession J.D., has been asserting the legal rights of families since 1993. His website – MassOutrage.com – is a crisis and survival guide for parents in divorce, paternity, domestic abuse restraining orders or child abuse and neglect case. Attorney Hession works to expose the dirty tricks used by courts and child protection agencies and how to fight them and win. His work shines a light of the injustice of the family court/juvenile/domestic violence system that more often than not, harms families, takes children from fit parents, bankrupts its victims, takes children for profit, plunders the taxpayers, and fills jails, courts, and the unemployment line. Attorney Hession illustrates how the system robs persons of their children, rights, dignity, guns, money, and souls. MassOutrage reveals the terrible inside truths about the seamy underbelly of the legal system.

The breakdown in our family culture is severe and getting worse. The problem is: the system cannot diagnose or fix these problems. It cannot be a substitute family, and provide needed self-restraint, love, diligence, religious training, or suffice for any other human need.

Since 2013, Pam has advocated for parental rights in legislative testimony and through her work for The Education Association of Christian Homeschoolers of CT. She has worked with the Parental Rights Coalition and in 2015 testified in favor of the Student Data Privacy bill. This year she testified against the medical treatment of minors without parental consent. Recently Pam spoke at the press conference regarding the OCA’s report calling for increased regulation of homeschoolers. Through the years she has seen the connection between the assault on parental rights in education and religious freedom and sees evidence of an indirect approach to promoting the disintegration of parental rights.